


The Most Expensive Starbucks In The World

by byzantienne



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Academia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:58:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1743890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byzantienne/pseuds/byzantienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis Bonnefoy and Arthur Kirkland go to the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Hilarity ensues. Also porn. Really amazingly nerdy porn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Expensive Starbucks In The World

**Author's Note:**

> This would be the Hetalia academia!AU I have been threatening people with for ages. I should probably be more ashamed of myself than I am. Especially since I drew about 90% of this from life. The date of the AHA's meeting in the New York Hilton Hilton has been, for the sake of the reputations of all historians putatively involved (including myself), moved six years back in time.

**January 3rd, 2003. The New York Hilton Hilton Hotel, basement level. 7:14 AM.**

The line of slightly disheveled and yawning besuited young academic things extends out the door of the Starbucks and winds halfway through the basement restaurant. Which is, _naturallment_ , closed until the delightfully late hour of nine. By which time Francis will have already sat through moderating an entire panel on colonial administration in interwar _Afrique occidentale française_ , a subject on which at least two of the scholars presenting are going to be _exceptionally_ wrong (he has read the abstracts, and cringed), and if he is still hungry after _that_ , he is certainly not going to come _here_ to do anything about it, even if this is the only restaurant in this entire enormous and God-forsaken hotel that does not require _reservations._

Francis clutches at his meager and poorly-brewed espresso shot and resolves to spend the next ten minutes considering whether Friday morning at the AHA is too soon to develop a crippling migraine which will prevent him from attending the remainder of the conference.

"You want me to pay _what_ for a cup of tea?"

Oh. How delightful. This basement _can_ be even more inhospitable!

Kirkland – unmistakable accent, his, all English Received Pronunciation glossing over something _vastly_ less refined – is waving his arms and knotting his eyebrows at the barista. The eyebrows have become more impressive since Francis saw him last, but they have no discernable effect on the barista, who, like all her kind, is bored and has served at least eighty – what _is_ it that Kirkland has ordered?

It is surely an imp of the perverse that makes him _ask_ that aloud.

Kirkland turns and looks him over. Francis entirely fails to resist the urge to preen. Not many historians can wear a gunmetal-green Yves Saint-Laurent suit with as much _aplomb_ as Francis can, especially before eight in the morning.

"Oh, bloody hell. You," says Kirkland. Francis attempts to decide whether chagrin is the reaction he intended to inspire.

" _Oui_. Me. Pay the poor young woman, Kirkland, it cannot be _that_ egregious a sum."

"This is the most expensive Starbucks in this entire city," Kirkland mutters.

"That, no doubt, is why we are having the AHA here."

Kirkland throws money at the barista, which gives Francis the opportunity to take his arm whether he wants it taken or not. There is certainly no room to talk inside this Starbucks, with the advancing hordes of the sleep-deprived clamoring so at the doors. It is doubtlessly Kirkland's own lack of proper rest that makes him so briefly tractable in Francis' grip. They manage to stagger, encumbered by coffee and the concoction Kirkland has so-unwisely paid actual money for, up the escalators and into the main hall, where the information desk – more of a pavilion, everything at the AHA is four times its usual size – is being manned by a small legion of determinedly red-t-shirt-clad graduate students.

Like all good things, Kirkland's tractability does not last.

He extracts himself from Francis and slumps down onto an unoffending bench, further rumpling his suit, hunching over his cup. Francis despairs of him. The suits continue to get better but his posture has not changed since Francis first caught sight of him in that seminar on global empire in their first semester in graduate school.

"I didn't even know you were coming this year," Francis says, sitting next to him (his suit, of course, does not rumple, he is capable of sitting up _straight_ ), "don't tell me that you're actually giving a paper."

"Tomorrow," Kirkland grunts. "Last session of the day. I'm sure you failed to notice because you haven't bothered to _look at the program book_."

"Last session? Who did you offend to get stuck with that, no one will come, everyone will be at the banquets!"

"I'm quite aware," Kirkland tells him, and tries to drink some of his drink. He fails, screwing up his face until it is actually _all_ eyebrows. Francis snickers.

"Shut up. No one in this bloody country can make tea."

"You bought it at a Starbucks, Arthur," Francis cajoles him. "What on earth did you expect?"

"Drinkability. Are you going to ask what my paper is about or should I wait until I give it for you to misunderstand my point entirely?"

Francis laughs. Is it possible that he has missed Kirkland's complete refusal to be civil? Surely not. "Oh, _surprise_ me. Unless you are still misappropriating Cain and Hopkins on capitalism, like you did all through your last book?"

"You _read_ it."

"I despised it."

"You read it." Kirkland smirks. Francis considers slapping the expression off his face, but that probably should wait until they are not in full view of _quite_ so many passers-by who might know who they are, and might give them (or at least might give _Francis_ ) a job some day.

"I had to read it in order to despise it properly," he retorts, and drinks the rest of the espresso. It tastes like cardboard and char and several more hours before he can find food.

"I looked at the program book. You aren't giving a paper. Why are you here?"

Francis rolls his eyes. "We're hiring an Atlantic history specialist. I'm on the committee."

"Who would put _you_ on a hiring committee for an Atlantic historian?"

" _Some_ people think I am an authority on the French empire overseas," he says, taking pains to be suitably offended.

"You poor sod. How many interviews?"

"… twenty-three," Francis admits.

He has to suffer through Kirkland laughing at him enough that he spills the dreadful tea-approximation on the floor. It is still more entertaining than drinking espresso alone, and what does that say, precisely, about Francis' general state of mind?

After, they even manage to walk with some small degree of companionability through the hallways, toward the panel Francis is supposed to be chairing. He is just about to open his mouth to inform Arthur of the continuous and exasperating failure of his colleagues to understand French Algeria when they happen upon the first of the book displays and he has a much, _much_ better idea.

"Look, _cher_ ," he says cheerfully, spinning Kirkland by his bony elbow, "isn't this the most _effusive_ demonstration of how well Alfred is doing for himself that you've ever seen?"

The table is absolutely covered in a three-volumes-thick layer of _After Independence: The Post-Colonial United States_ by Alfred F. Jones, Ph.D. The cover is quite well-designed, Francis thinks. The kneeling Redcoat looks just as miserable as the Revoluntionary soldier standing over him looks traumatized. Alfred's publisher has outdone himself! Even if Francis had only been tangentially involved in the completion of Alfred's dissertation, he can't help feeling perhaps abnormally proud of the young man. His _own_ first book had never received an entire display table at the AHA. Perhaps it is basking in reflected glory, but it is glory that could have been Kirkland's and is Francis' instead –

Furthermore, Kirkland has turned a fascinating shade of puce. Francis could not be more delighted.

"What did he do, fellate all of Simon and Schuester!?" he sputters.

"More like Oxford University Press," Francis informs him, as pleasantly as possible. "And I sadly doubt there was fellation involved – well, on Alfred's end, at least, I wouldn't be surprised about his editor – "

The puce increases in intensity. Perhaps Kirkland is hereditarily inclined toward apoplexy.

"That – that glib, arrogant, smug, ill-prepared -- _ungrateful_ \--" Kirkland pauses, as if looking for a suitably damning noun to go with that litany of adjectives, " _postcolonialist_."

He says it as if it was a curse, which, in Francis' opinion, it ought to be, except when it is a compliment instead.

"Just so," he says, clapping Kirkland on the back. "Now I must run, I am going to be late to the ideological dismemberment of the Algerian War."

\---

**1:15 PM.**

There is a particular sort of hell peculiar to the job market at the AHA. Francis knows it intimately.

It is the sort of hell that leaves him, their medievalist (who doesn't want to be here at all) and the head of his department sitting awkwardly on the bed in the department head's hotel room, so at least the candidates can have an actual chair.

Whoever invented the AHA interview, Francis is sure, was a sadist of a creative and elegant stripe, with a fixation on humiliation. Of course, he is not entirely sure whether the humiliation is pointed at the candidates, here for this bedroom interrogation, or at himself and his erstwhile colleagues, who must suffer through twenty-three individual iterations of terror and arrogance.

This one has a terrible suit and has been talking about Derrida for the past twenty minutes, while slowly slumping into a heap under the blistering hatred of Francis' regard for people who fail to employ post-structuralism correctly. As a result, Francis' headache has transformed from mildly inconvenient to something more akin to that experienced whilst under the kind ministrations of a Spanish Inquisitor armed with a skullcrusher.

"I'm taking a break," he tells his department head, who looks almost as haggard as he feels. "I'll be back in an hour."

The candidate raises his bedraggled head and gazes at Francis pleadingly.

"Or two," Francis revises. "Perhaps three."

\--

**1:45 PM.**

Having escaped one purgatory for another, Francis wanders the hallways unsupervised. He fills a paper cup half with coffee and half with cream from the coffee service stand, and drinks it while he reads the signs outside the panel-room doors. He feels delightfully surreptitious, and also like a graduate student, which are similar states of being – or were, in his case at least – stalking about with no particular agenda, seeking only the finest efflorescence of scholarship to eavesdrop upon.

This door reads NINETEENTH CENTURY IMPERIAL MARRIAGES, 1:30-3:30 PM.

Francis checks his watch. It is 1:45 in the afternoon.

Ah, why not?

The absolute worst coincidence that could occur would involve Kirkland being ensconced – right over there, in the third row. He is next to a large man in a cream suit and a cravat – dear God, has he brought Braginski to a panel? – nevertheless, Francis can't help but admire the cravat as he approaches the row behind them, aiming to whisper comments about the panelists in Kirkland's captive ear while he cannot get away.

"Bonnefoy, hello," murmurs Braginski, and Francis smirks at him pleasantly.

" _Where?_ " Kirkland hisses. "Oh."

" _Bonjour_ , Arthur," Francis purrs, and slides into the chair just in back of Kirkland's.

Some small interminable time later, Francis has this to say about nineteenth century imperial marriages, one-thirty to three-thirty _post meridian_ : the subject has attracted for panelists one ill-prepared graduate student, one possibly brilliant but completely incomprehensible theoretician who is making Francis feel as if he has done the world a great disservice by not worshipping on his knees at a peculiar double altar to the saints Gramsci and Stoler, and one staunch Marxist. Of the _Soviet_ sort. How did he even get in here? Hasn't the Cold War been over for long enough that the collective minds of Eastern Europe might have thawed out by now?

Braginski, by the infuriated muttering in Kirkland's direction he is so assiduously performing, rather agrees with Francis on that point. Francis is not at all surprised – Braginski has always been notorious both for his championship of Russian academe and his infuriation with its most recent egregious decades-long methodological error. It is one of the things Francis has always found terribly attractive about the man.

Well, terribly attractive when he isn't annoying Kirkland with it. _Francis_ was going to annoy Kirkland.

Instead, he is bored. And hungry. And has spent the opening five minutes of the question period considering being horny while in the same room as Arthur Kirkland, which has never been a good idea before and isn't one now. Of course, it may be a better idea than sitting through the rest of this, considering –

Braginski has elevated his hand. The panel moderator, all unsuspecting, gives him the floor. He turns to the (oh, _so_ unfortunate) Marxist and smiles. Braginski has a somewhat terrifyingly gentle smile at times like this.

Francis taps Kirkland on the shoulder. "Perhaps, _mon cher_ , we should escape while we still can."

Kirkland glares at him.

This is a terrible, _terrible_ idea, and Kirkland thinks it is a worse one, and that is more than enough reason to go on with it! "I can think of so _many_ better things to do with our afternoon than watch a re-enactment of the August Coup, can't you?" he says, leaning in.

Kirkland looks as if he is about to do something exceptionally unprofessional, like knee Francis in the groin. It's really quite delightfully diverting. "I'm sure you can, you perverted Francophone dilettante," he hisses.

"If I recall experience correctly, _you_ are the one who is perverted, _cher_. I am merely _perverse_."

"I am not having this conversation in a conference room."

Francis gets to his feet. "Oh. There's this convenient hallway just outside, if you so insist," he says.

Kirkland stands faster. "Out. Out, before you embarrass me in front of my colleagues," he bristles, and brushes past Francis, stalking for the door.

As if Braginski or anyone else was paying enough attention to be embarrassed!

\---

**3:28 P.M.**

"Aren't you supposed to be enduring interviews," Kirkland says accusingly, and so Francis backs him up against the wall and leans in with his hand pressed to the striped wallpaper just above his shoulder – he has five inches of height on Kirkland and it will never cease to be amusing to employ them – Kirkland scowls and _doesn't_ flinch, and some fluttering implausible warmth goes skittering down Francis' spine.

"Oh, most likely," he says. "But the heights of scholarship, Arthur. I require them."

"You mean the _depths_ , you ingrate. You wouldn't know the heights of scholarship if I read them to you straight out of _Gentlemanly Capitalism_ \--"

"All seven hundred and sixty-eight pages of it?"

"That's _British Imperialism, 1688-2000_ , have you forgotten _everything_ we read in graduate school?"

"Everything by Cain and Hopkins. But if you _insist_ on reading to me, I'm sure I can find some way of being accommodating –" Really, Kirkland's hair is a disaster. Moreso, with Francis' fingers disarraying it.

Now he flinches, or at least grabs hold of Francis' ponytail – which was _not_ a disaster, not until just this moment! – and pulls hard enough that Francis isn't quite sure how he escaped under his arm and reversed their positions so fast. The thud of his spine hitting the wall is probably audible inside IMPERIAL MARRIAGE PRACTICES. It certainly knocks the breath out of him.

"What, I'm supposed to follow you back to your room," Kirkland is saying, "and spend my time doing what our professors couldn't manage, and convince you of the economic basis of imperial expansion?"

Francis lets his eyelids drift half-shut, catches Kirkland's gaze through the blur of his eyelashes. "I _am_ only three floors up. Arthur."

Kirkland sputters. Then he shoves Francis ineffectually in the chest and takes a single step back. It's not terribly far away. "You're actually staying in the conference hotel. With the most expensive Starbucks in the world."

"Yes," Francis says, amiably enough.

"You just want easy access to postgrad arse," Kirkland mutters accusingly.

Francis tips his head back against the wallpaper and laughs. It feels delicious. "I like the towels, you philistine, and that I don't have to get up earlier than ten minutes before my first panel of the day." He pauses to smile, as lasciviously as he knows how. "Oh, and 'postgrad arse', as you say."

"They don't serve decent tea here," Kirkland tells him, as if that was the deciding factor about _everything_.

"And they do in the rat-trap hostel you are undoubtedly holed up in?"

"Of course not. I don't expect it."

"You _are_. I cannot believe you actually _are_ , I meant that as teasing!" Francis finds himself unexpectedly incredulous and even more unexpectedly inconvenienced by fondness – Kirkland _would_ just be the sort to stay in a hostel even three years after they'd given him tenure. Absurd man. "Are you pretending you still are in _possession_ of postgrad arse?"

"You seem awfully concerned with that particular attribute of mine."

" _You_ are the one who mentioned it first," Francis protests.

"I assume you're waiting to be asked back to my rat-trap hostel – "

" _Mon dieu_ ," Francis intones, pressing his palm to his forehead. "Three. Floors. Up. Arthur."

Kirkland laughs. It is a dreadful sound. Francis wraps one hand around his skull and yanks him close enough to kiss, which silences him _more_ than adequately. It also, when Kirkland shoves his tongue past Francis' teeth, has the intriguing side-effect of leaving Francis breathless and concerned for the state of both his (fashionably slim-cut) pants and his academic career, should IMPERIAL MARRIAGE PRACTICES ever emerge from its question period and into the hall.

Even so, it is at _least_ several minutes before Kirkland pulls back – Francis bites his lip as he does, catches it in his teeth and scrapes so that Kirkland hisses between clenched teeth and dabs his tongue like he's trying to taste blood – Francis should not be thinking about that so _vividly_ right _here_.

"Three floors up, Francis?" Kirkland says, arch and lilting and Received Pronunciation is a dreadful thing to do to any language, Francis swears it is, would say so to the senior scholars spilling out of the conference rooms if he hadn't locked his hand around Kirkland's wrist and was dragging him towards the nearest elevator post-haste.

Almost, they escape into it. The doors open, Kirkland ducks under his arm to lean hipshot and insufferable against the back wall, and Francis assaults the door-close button with a certain amount of ineffectual urgency. Nothing – of course, Francis has committed himself to carnal activities with Arthur Kirkland, everything _will_ begin to go hopelessly wrong now! – happens. The doors remain open, framing the advancing, cheerily smiling visage of Ivan Braginski, who waves at them and _begins to jog forward_.

"These God-damned buttons," Francis mutters, frantically.

"They never work," says Kirkland, which means that for one blessed moment the door begins to close –

Braginski sticks his hand between them, and they, the hideous obliging things, part like he was Moses.

"Braginski," Francis says. He even manages to nod his head courteously in greeting, which is an accomplishment when he is suffering simultaneously from profound sexual frustration and sheer hysterical annoyance.

"Francis, Arthur!" Braginski says happily. "I have just had the most enlightening discussion!"

"What could it possibly have been about," Kirkland says through gritted teeth.

"The Tsar's economic connections with England in the late nineteenth century and the influence of class warfare on marital habits in Tashkent!" Braginski begins. Then he peers inquisitively at Kirkland, who is – Francis is obscurely proud – still flushed. "Are you feeling quite well, Arthur?"

"I'm _fine_ ," Kirkland says.

Braginski tilts his head toward Francis, and then back to Kirkland, and back again at Francis. Francis _smiles_. Braginski ceases to talk. Kirkland makes an inchoate noise of disapproval and acquires the semblance of a man who would like to be kicking Francis in the shin but cannot due to an unfortunate attack of propriety in front of his departmental colleague.

Blissfully, the doors open on the third floor, and Francis' brief fear that Braginski will follow them all the way back to his room is assuaged when he heads down the corridor in the opposite direction. There is a hysterical moment in which Francis cannot – what is _wrong_ with his hands? – get the key-card into the appropriate slot. It slides out of his fingers and onto the carpet and Kirkland snatches it up before he can reach.

"If that's an example of your current prowess this is an even worse idea than I thought it was," Kirkland says, which gives Francis the opportunity to seize him around the wrist and run his fingertips over the back of his keycard-carrying hand. The veins are just barely prominent under the skin. His fingers are – are not _pretty_ , are spindly and calloused and inkstained and long, and fumbling as badly with the card as Francis had. Which is _only fair_. Only _just_ , even!

"Open the door already, Arthur," he insinuates against his ear, and is gratified by the flutter of his eyelids, the knitting of those ridiculous eyebrows.

Because he is being considerate, he doesn't even tumble Kirkland onto the floor when he finally manages to operate both keycard and door-handle – merely slides around him, brushing the back of his hand up against his hips as he does. The heat there is enough to scald him right through Kirkland's cheap polyester-blend suit. Heat, and firmness that pulses against his hand, so he _presses_ and Kirkland hisses through his teeth and grabs Francis by the back collar of his suit and shirt at once. His nails scratch down Francis' neck, little sharp lines that make his eyelids flutter involuntarily closed, and then he's being shoved forward into the room, hard enough to stumble and gasp, grinning, on the new thickness of the air.

"Git," Kirkland says and Francis would swear that it is only in these peculiar situations where one or both of them are about to be naked that he is quite so aware of how Kirkland can move like he's _dangerous_ , like he is entirely prepared to make Francis a _conquest_ for the temerity of touching him. It is, as so many things about Kirkland have always been, bizarrely thrilling. Perhaps even _enthralling_.

He sidesteps, back and away. Kirkland follows, tracking him with pupils gone too wide, too intent and dark.

"Ah," says Francis, lifting one hand, warding, enticing, "I thought we came up here so that you could convince me that imperial expansion is a primarily economic activity?"

Kirkland has his wrist, tight, tight enough that the links of his watch are going to leave bruises where they press. "Oh, I'll give you imperial expansion – "

Francis pulls his trapped hand up against his chest, and _falls_ , backward and boneless. Gravity has them, gravity works in Francis' favor, and he can see Kirkland's eyes fly open in surprise just before his back hits the bed and Kirkland lands on top of him, still holding his wrist. His hips press up exactly where Francis wants them, right against his own, and when he grinds closer the ache rolls up and down his spine in spreading, hungry waves. He wraps one leg around Kirkland's ass, slides his heel down the inside of his thigh, leans up to bite and lick at his throat. " _Cultural_ activity," he breathes.

The hand that Kirkland hasn't wrapped around his watch lands in Francis' hair and pulls. It hurts. Kirkland smirks at him and yanks harder when Francis drags his nails up his spine, roughly dislodging jacket and shirttails – slams his hips down and corkscrews the sharp edge of his hipbone over Francis' groin.

"You say that again and I'll give you something better to do with your mouth."

"I will bite it off, your historiography is _blindered_ \--"

"And yours is _biased_ \--"

Francis' palm fits perfectly against the ridge of Kirkland's cock – when he squeezes, Kirkland cuts himself off mid-sentence, groans, seizes Francis' lips in his teeth. He's trapped himself there, now, between their hips, so he ruts up against the back of his hand and presses Kirkland's zipper into him in ways he knows must be painful but which Kirkland entirely deserves and will likely get off on regardless, he is _perverted_ and always has been, Francis has known ever since he sucked him off under the table in the TA lounge in the second semester of their first year of the PhD –

It is fast, after that. Too fast, _embarrassingly_ fast, a smear of Kirkland's hands in his hair and kisses that bruise, both of their pants opened but not off, the way that their cocks drag together, not quite slick enough in Francis' fist.

He can't even say anything about the speed at which they have both ended up streaked sticky and white, not without impugning his own stamina in a manner that Kirkland will never let him hear the end of. He sighs, instead. "Cultural."

"Economic," Kirkland exhales, and sprawls himself more securely over the lapels of Francis' suit –

Francis' very expensive, perfectly tailored, semen-stained suit.

It is very satisfying to shove Kirkland sideways off the bed and have him land with a thud and a curse on the floor.

"You have _ruined my suit_ ," Francis declares, to the ceiling and God above it.

"And you've ruined mine!" Kirkland retorts. He gestures at the wrinkled, messy, _unfashionable_ fabric clinging, all debauched, to his hips.

"Yes," Francis agrees, "but on yours, it is an improvement."

\---

**5:43 P.M.**

It takes a preemptive sortie into the territory of tomorrow's wardrobe, but Francis eventually manages to emerge from the bathroom looking merely _artistically_ disheveled. Kirkland, for his part, has sprawled on the bed and removed his shoes. He looks Francis up and down. It'd be entirely lascivious if it wasn't for the eyebrows.

"You must," he says, "hate your department head a great deal to have abandoned the interviews for the entire afternoon. Either that or you're looking to be denied tenure."

Francis laughs. It seems the only thing to do in the face of how Kirkland is _deeply_ infuriating, quite often. "I do not hate my department head. Entirely. Are you still on the bed because you expect us to fuck?"

"Oh, for God's sake."

"Because if we do, _cher_ , one of us will be too sore to sit down all the way through tonight's business banquet."

"That would be _you_ , you insufferable self-destructive –"

"If you finish that sentence, Arthur, I will be forced to discuss the merits of Professor Jones' thesis _at length_."

"Shut up and get over here before I make you."

"He has a point about the persistence of colonial ideologies –"

\---  
\--  
.

The frightening part of this fic is that it needs almost as many footnotes as the standard Hetalia sort would.

The [American Historical Association](http://www.historians.org/), which really did have its annual meeting in the [New York Hilton Hotel.](http://www.newyorkhiltonhotel.com/) In 2009. (I worked it as a graduate student staff member.) Out of respect to the actual attendants of said annual meeting, this one has been moved to 2003.

Arthur and Francis are arguing opposite sides of the traditional historiography on eighteenth and nineteenth century imperialism. They're both right. Sort of. It depends on whether you're looking at the British or the French Empire. This is [British Imperialism, by Cain and Hopkins](http://www.amazon.com/British-Imperialism-1688-2000-Peter-Cain/dp/0582472865), which really is 768 pages long. I read all of it in my first year of grad school. It took a very long time. (Secret: I am kind of on Francis' side in this argument.) Francis' argument comes primarily from Brunschwig, _French Colonialism: Myths and Realities_ , but is also probably heavily indebted to David Robinson ( _Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880-1920_ ) and David Prochaska ( _Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bãone, 1870-1920_ ). Any misinterpretation of these scholars is my own fault. I've tried to only take a _little_ dramatic license.

Dr. Alfred F. Jones is a [postcolonialist.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism) I suspect the theory makes Alfred's head hurt.

Professor Ivan Braginski seems to be studying [Imperial Russia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Russia). (Also, the [August Coup](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Coup), for reference.)

The saints [Gramsci](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramsci) and [Stoler](http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty.aspx?id=10416).

The Starbucks in the basement of the Hilton is indeed the most expensive Starbucks in the world.


End file.
